Speaker
Description
A Galactic Census of Exoplanets from the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Abstract: The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope (Roman) is NASA’s next major
astrophysics mission, scheduled for launch in late 2026. Roman will feature a wavelength range, aperture, and angular resolution comparable to the Hubble Space Telescope but with approximately 100 times the field of view and 1,000 times the sky-mapping speed. This capability allows it to survey large sky areas rapidly or repeatedly observe smaller areas with high frequency. A key community survey during Roman’s primary mission will be the Roman Galactic Bulge Time Domain Survey (RGBTDS). This survey will monitor about 1.7 square degrees of the Galactic center with a cadence of approximately 12 minutes using a wide 1–2 micron filter, spanning six seasons of 72 days each, with a total survey duration of 440 days. The RGBTDS aims to detect thousands of cold bound and free-floating planets using microlensing, as well as about 100,000 hot and warm transiting planets. Roman’s transit and microlensing data will enable the first comprehensive statistical survey of exoplanets within all the major stellar populations of the Galaxy, covering planets with radii or masses greater than twice that of Earth across all orbital distances. I will review Roman's potential for constraining the demographics of exoplanets and discuss challenges and opportunities in realizing this potential.
